Some local banks are experiencing an increase in customers as larger national banks unveil plans to charge for use of their debit card service.

River Town Bank and First State Bank are two area banks with no plans to charge a monthly fee for the service, and both are drawing interest from customers of larger banks that will begin assessing charges in the near future.

“We’re seeing a lot of new accounts,” Suzy Awalt, a loan processor with River Town Bank, said. “On a daily basis, people are moving their accounts. ... People don’t like being charged to use something so convenient.”

Factors like convenience have led the debit card feature to be a popular service, especially among younger customers, First State Bank Executive Vice President Toni Laws said.

“If you segmented our customer base and looked at customers under the age of 30, the amount that uses a debit card is a good 95 percent,” Laws said. “Above that age the percentage goes down a little bit. Plenty of seniors have embraced the debit card but some haven’t. Probably about 70 percent of our overall customer base uses debit cards.”

While Laws said First State Bank has received many phone calls from customers about the possibility of opening a new account, she said many won’t want to go through the process.

“Switching a checking account is a big deal,” Laws said. “People have direct deposits, automatic withdrawals. It’s a process for some that’s not easy. So not everybody will run out and switch, but I do think a lot will switch because they can.”

Awalt agreed not everyone will switch banks.

“There’s some that are still going to use them, and it won’t faze them either way,” she said.

Banks across Arkansas are reporting a similar upswing in business since their decision to resist charging for debit card use.

“We very definitely have noticed an increase,” said Bob Birch, regional president of Centennial Bank, which is headquartered in Conway and has banks in Arkansas and Florida.

“Obviously we’ve been getting a lot of calls … there are a lot of people unhappy about this deal,” said John Womack, chairman of Arvest Bank’s Central Arkansas region. Arvest also has banks in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

“It certainly is giving us some opportunity, but quite frankly I don’t think the big play will hit until those charges start, probably at the first of the year or when ever they kick them in,” Womack said.

Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank based on deposits, will begin charging a $5 monthly fee to debit card users on Jan. 1. Over the summer, several regional banks announced such fees: Atlanta-based SunTrust announced a $5 fee and Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., a $4 fee. Additionally, several national banks, including Chase and Wells Fargo, are testing $3 monthly debit card fees in select markets.

The fee has been a rallying cry in the recent Occupy Wall Street protest movement in which participants have denounced corporate greed. Bank of America was one of the more than 700 financial institutions that received about $205 billion in federal bailout money in 2008 and 2009. The bank received $45 billion and has since repaid the money to the federal government.

Bank officials have said they needed additional revenue to recoup a projected $2 billion annual loss expected because of new federal regulation’s “swipe fee” rules that went into effect Oct. 1 reducing the cap on fees banks can charge merchants for processing debit card transactions from 44 cents to 24 cents.

Laws said for smaller banks, the decrease will not be as significant as with national banks.

“We don’t have the volume of bigger banks, so I’m not seeing the new regulation as having much of an impact on us,” Laws said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said the goal of the lower cap was to leave more money in the hands of retailers and merchants, rather than the banks.

Officials at several community banks and credit unions in Arkansas said last week that the phone calls began almost immediately after Bank of America’s announcement.

“We had people coming immediately,” Birch said. “In fact some had come in before because they had received notification from their bank about the change or read about it on an Internet blog. I think there was a lot of attention that was made and customers have responded and are responding.”

Womack said Arvest Bank, the largest bank chartered in Arkansas and owned by the family of Walmart founder Sam Walton, has received a number of calls from potential customers.

“We owe it to our customers” to resist the debit card fee, Womack said. “We feel very strongly that we want to support our customers just like we always have.”

Since Bank of America’s announcement, two U.S. House members, Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Bill Owens, D-New York, have announced plans for legislation that would repeal the “swipe fee” regulation.